Projections show a zettabyte of annual data transfers by 2016

A zettabyte. Let’s put that amount of data into perspective.

That’s 1024 exabytes. An exabyte is 1024 terabytes. Now it’s starting to become clear as many people have an idea of how large a terabyte is, but in case you don’t, it’s 1024 gigabytes. Now we’re talking – everyone knows that a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Now that we have a point of reference, take a gigabyte drive and stack 1,099,511,627,776 of them on top of each other. That’s a zettabyte, and that’s what Cisco is predicting for annual data transfers worldwide in three years.

Check out this infographic to get a full scope of it all.

Created by XO Communications

Big data is bigger than most realize

On the tail of the release of a report that showed how synthetic DNA could be used to store zettabytes of data in the palm of our hand, it’s important to understand just how much information that really is. The term “big data” is already appearing to be the most overused word of the year in 2013 and it’s only January, so grasping the size of how big it all really is makes for an interesting visualization.

Search Engine Journal attacked the topic, and while they’re doing so from a search perspective, the infographic looks at it from many creative perspectives. The fact that the infographic itself is huge is a fact that’s not lost on the reader.

Projections show a zettabyte of annual data transfers by 2016

Big data is bigger than most realize

Things to do on TECHi

Tech Intelligence Whitepaper